Advancements in network technologies have increased the number and types of services provided over networks. Many network-based services provide guaranteed levels of service that generally stipulate a need for monitoring network performance in order to maintain or verify the guaranteed service levels. Consequently, performance monitoring technologies have been developed to measure network performance. Unfortunately, many performance monitoring technologies are proprietary to vendors and unavoidably force network service providers to rely on a specific vendor. Moreover, existing technologies dedicated to monitoring network performance are typically resource hungry. That is, the existing technologies typically impose high loads on network resources.
Other existing performance monitoring technologies require use of a control protocol to establish test sessions between network endpoints. Unfortunately, the required use of a control protocol adds overhead costs to each test session, especially when the control protocol requires in-band messages to be exchanged between network elements. Moreover, the levels of control and monitoring provided by in-band control sessions are generally limited. For example, an in-band control session is generally unable to provide information about a test session failure because the in-band control session is usually affected by the same failure.